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As the Seasons Grey	By : christinecornell Category: Celebrities - Misc > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 46 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Started life as kinky Christmas-related short stories in 2022 and took on a life of its own shortly thereafter. 100 fiction, none of this is real, and I own nothing except for the character of Christine.

Chapter List
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I was still shook up from the incident with Christine's father, such that my hands trembled as I brought the bites of latke and applesauce up to my mouth. Christine herself meanwhile never left my side as she indulged in her plate, and I could tell that she was enjoying it because it was humble and delicious while we were living in a cold house with no electricity and nothing better to do other than read books and play cards. She huddled up close to me but she never actually touched the side of my body, however. Though it was cold in the house, I started to feel warm again from the taste of those potatoes with the sliced and diced onions and the minced garlic. Though I had been jarred from my place, I still needed to eat, and I still needed to get back home to my parents, too. I blew on the next bite of latke before I slipped it into my mouth.
“How are they?” Wendy asked me.
“Delicious,” I said with my mouth full. “They taste almost as good as my grandmother's latkes.” I swallowed and took another sip of my coffee.
“Nothing beats Grandma's cooking,” she replied with a little smile on her face.
“Not at all! When I was a kid, my aunt and my grandma would also make my brother and me babka for Hanukkah, which he and I always loved. It was from there that I realized that nothing beats the real thing. Nothing beats the thing that came straight out of the home.”
“I think I've actually seen that at a bakery before,” she said as she took her seat next to Christine at the far end of the couch. “It's like a cross between a Swiss roll and a bread, isn't it?”
“Sort of,” I said. “It's definitely kosher in comparison to a Swiss roll, I would think, but it's more like... phyllo dough with chocolate drops, some cinnamon, and some melted chocolate rolled up and then coiled into a tin. We always like a little chocolate babka in our life.”
“We should make that at some point, Chris,” Wendy suggested.
“You've got chocolate babka, there's also cinnamon and apple,” I added. “Chocolate is the best, but I also love me some apple.” Right as I said that, I scooped up a bit of applesauce, which I could tell was sweeter than I was used to. But I wasn't going to complain.
“By the way, Wendy, is it all that flooded out there?” the grandfather asked her.
“Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you that, too,” I chimed in as I took another bite of applesauce.
“Actually, no!” Wendy assured us. “Although, I suppose it is elsewhere, but there's just some big puddles outside of the sidewalk. You know, you have to be careful walking along the storm drain because there are literal rivers out there. But it's not like immense flooding, though.”
“Plus, it's going downhill,” I added as I took another bite of latke.
“It's all going downhill, exactly,” Wendy declared. Christine then turned her attention over to me with a slightly annoyed look on her face.
“I hope this shit's not boring you,” she whispered to me.
“Hey, I would much rather chat about this than what happened with your dad back there,” I assured her.
“Oh, yeah, anything beats that, to be honest,” she said with a nod. “But you know, boring grown-up stuff.”
“You know, you're going to be a boring grown-up yoursself soon,” I pointed out to her as I took my last bite of latke.
“I kind of don't want to be,” she confessed. “You know, just because you reach eighteen years old doesn't mean you have to actually grow up and become boring.”
“You know, it's the funniest thing,” I told her as I set my empty plate down on the coffee table before me and I picked up my coffee in lieu of it; “I feel the exact same way. Who says you have to give up what you are once you've reached a certain age?”
And she showed me a smile at that.
It was right then I noticed that the rain had slowed down on the roof overhead.
“Is the rain stopping?” her grandfather then asked from the kitchen table.
“I think it is, Dad,” Wendy replied. I sipped on the coffee and the vagabond in me came alive right then. All the times that Testament travelled somewhere in the world or even there in the States, and the sheer sight of the hotel room all around me only made me want to go out and explore the town. Wendy then offered to take mine and Christine's empty plates, much to my pleasure.
“Thank you, Mom,” she said.
“Yeah, thank you, Wendy!” I added, and once again, I swore she flashed me a wink. I finished the rest of my coffee and turned my attention to Christine.
“Wanna take a walk?” I offered her.
“I'd love to,” she replied. “I have to get dressed, but I'd like to do that, though.”
“Go out and get some fresh air,” I added. “I have to find my shirt, anyways.” I couldn't help but chuckle at that, either.
Once her mom and grandparents were paying more attention to each other, she and I returned to our rooms for a quick change, whereby I found my shirt tucked under my pillow for some reason. But then I realized why and I couldn't resist chuckling again as well as wrinkling my nose and sticking out my tongue.
Once I had my shirt back on, I returned to the hallway and Christine dressed in faded denim jeans and a little black windbreaker.
“Shall we?” I asked her.
“We shall,” she replied.
Once we told the three of them what was happening, we left the house and stepped outside to the gray morning. Though the place hadn't flooded like Wendy had said, small puddles still formed all across the yard, and the storm drain was one deluge away from overflowing onto the sidewalk as well. Nevertheless, we still walked up the street together, and I had a feeling that she was going to show me the stump.
“We go in the other direction and we'll be swept away by the flood waters,” she pointed out to me, to which I chuckled.
We reached the next corner up before we hung a right. The next corner up and we hung a left.
It was all so we could keep going uphill and away from whatever raging waters that came our way.
“I hope I'm not being too intrusive about it,” I confessed to her as the neighborhood around us grew much more overgrown with trees and bushes, all of which were dark and sparse for the onset of winter in the coming weeks. “You know my whole thing of 'I really don't want to impose on anyone'.”
“You're not being intrusive,” she assured me with a shake of her head. “Especially since he came after you.”
She fetched up a sigh and stared straight ahead: I followed her gaze to the veil of clouds over the mountains. We weren't far from the base of them as well as the sparse snow banks that capped them. At least it didn't snow that much.
“I love my dad but he's got his problems, though,” she pointed out. “He and my mom have separated, and he's still kind of raw about it. Then again, he should talk about it to me. He likes to drink, and my mom doesn't really like that he does that, especially in front of me. I remember one time he downed a whole bottle of gin over the course of a single day, and my mom was like 'no way' and she got me out of there. He's not a very good drunk, either.”
“I've known a few people like that,” I told her. “Where the members of my old band and I would have a drink or two and then we'd giggle and fool around and shit, there was always someone on the crew who would have a few too many and start yelling at us for no reason.”
“Exactly like that!” she exclaimed. “And it's always really scary to be around and watch right before your eyes, too, because you don't know if they're going to punch you or do something awful to themselves. So, my mom got me away from him for a bit but I wanted to be with him again because—like I said, I love my dad and I want to see him get better. So they split and I stayed with him for a whole summer before he promised me to stop drinking. When he did, I went to go stay with my mom, and that was when my own relationship fell apart and then I dyed my hair after that as a change of sorts. When he was at the door earlier, I could smell a little booze on his breath. I've grown up around alcohol enough to where I can smell even just a few drops of it from clear across the room. It also helped that the wind carried it into the house, too.”
“Oh, wow, I didn't even notice,” I confessed as I ran my hand down from my chest down to my stomach. “All I could smell was the latkes and the coffee your mom got for us.”
But she bowed her head a bit and looked down to the drenched pavement and the small rivulets in the storm drain below our feet.
“The first man I ever loved,” she said in a soft voice, and I tilted my head to the side at the sight of her there next to me.
“First man you ever loved and had a relationship with, too,” I added.
“All of that before my ex showed up, and before you showed up, too,” she continued it.
“He promised you that he would stop drinking—actually promised you—”
“Right to my face, too,” she added, and she lowered her voice to a near whisper.
“—and yet there he was, right there at your grandparents' house, just reeking of it,” I followed along, and she nodded her head at that with a crestfallen look on her face.
“Mmm, I wouldn't say he was reeking of it,” she corrected me with a slight shrug of her shoulders, “but I could tell you that he had had some to drink before he showed up.”
“Which means he also took off in his car after that...” My voice trailed off, and I shuddered at the thought of someone climbing behind the wheel after they had had just a little too much to drink, especially with that person being her own father.
She and I fell into momentary silence with our gazes fixed on the storm drain beneath us; all the while, I noticed a few circles along the surface of the water, and I could tell that the sprinkles were going to give way to even more rain after that. Though things were not very flooded at the moment, I knew that it was definitely a possibility, and I could potentially miss out on the first couple of nights of Hanukkah with my parents as well.
I then turned my head to the right, to the stretch of sidewalk that snaked up the street beside us.
“So, tell me,” I began again to her. “Where's this stump at? The stump of the tree that fell on you?”
Her expression never changed as she strode around behind me, and I followed her right at her back. The storm drain seemed to swell as we moved further along, and then we reached the next corner and crosswalk up before us. Across the street stood an old house that looked to be empty, and behind that was an empty lot entrenched in mud and large puddles that could probably flood a bit should the rain pick back up again. With a quick glimpse in either direction, Christine and I crossed the street, albeit with a hop over the rivulets in the storm drains.
She brought me to the corner across from us, and I looked on at the empty house. Something about it gave me a weird feeling in my stomach, as if something happened there before and I should be worried. But I wasn't worried, and I shook it off once we reached the empty lot, which consisted of nothing more than slabs of blacktop and patches of dark mud.
“It's right here,” she declared, and she brought me to the dead center of it all, barring we avoided the mud all around us and treated the blacktop as stepping stones instead. Indeed, there stood a large round stump right in the middle of the muck and the mud, one that was wide enough for the two of us and maybe Wendy, too, to have a seat on. The cuts on the stump had eroded with the passing of time, and thus, I knew she was telling the truth. I looked on at her and the thoughtful look in her eyes: the fine mist that fell over us left tiny droplets on the crown of her head accentuated the red of her hair. The gray sunlight around us washed out the color to her face, and her skin resembled porcelain as a result.
I gazed up to the gray sky overhead as I tried to picture that big tree that fell over on top of her. Those wandering branches as they cascaded over her, and the earth took her in its arms. To think that she had taken the path that she had taken, and she was still standing there on the sidewalk next to me. She continued to stand, with her hands in her pockets and the scars that she bore all to tell the world about it. If only there was a way in which she could overcome it and use it to her advantage, and I could tell she was on her way given how she liked to joke around with me and be all cozied up next to me.
I was more stunned by the fact that she had survived it all, and more so when I shivered from the wind picking up courtesy of the mountain slopes off to our right. The rain was coming, and yet the silence was all that we could do right then.
“An absolute miracle that you're here with us right now,” I whispered to her over the winds behind us.
“It really is,” she whispered back to me, and she extended one hand out towards me as if to hold mine. I swallowed as I extended mine to her own: her fingers gripped onto the side of my palm, and I let my own fingers curl around her hand. A chill ran up my spine right then, and something told me that it wasn't the wind.
“When my ex and I were together, I often dreamed of this,” she confessed.
“You never got to hold hands with him?” I asked her, taken aback, and she shook her head at that.
“Not even one time,” she said. “I would often dream of kissing him and holding him, just like how I did with you back at the house. But I never could do it. I could never find the courage to do that.”
“Why is that?” I asked her.
“Like I said, I just never felt good enough. I never felt like I was worthy of kissing him or holding him. I never felt like I could really tell him as to how I felt about him.” She nibbled on her bottom lip right then. “And that's why he's my ex.”
“So I should consider myself lucky,” I muttered. The rain picked up as the words left my lips, and Christine tugged the hood over her head with her free hand.
“We should probably get home,” I advised her.
“Yeah, I think we should, too,” she said. “I'm starting to get cold.” She squeezed my hand before she let go of me, and then she huddled up close to me. The two of us began to walk along the sidewalk, away from the empty lot and the swelling puddles there, and I hoped that the rain and wind wouldn't pick up at any point on the way back to the house. We reached the house on the corner, whereby I caught a glimpse of the dark roof and the trees that protected it from the elements. I spotted the witching window at the back and a shiver ran down my spine. We passed the two windows that looked out to the street, both of them as black as night, and then the corner of the house and the edge of the yard. All the while, I glanced back to it.
There was just something about the house that gave me such a weird, indescribable feeling, and it was one of those things that was going to drive me absolutely batty for the rest of the day if I did nothing about it. We reached the corner when I finally stopped, and I took a good long look at it. Christine stopped right next to me and closed her coat lest a gust of wind come up before us.
“I should probably tell you that my ex and his family used to live in this house here,” she told me.
“They used to live here?” I asked her, slightly stunned, and she nodded her head at me.
“Not for very long, like not even a year but—yeah, they actually used to live out here.”
I turned my head for another look at the house again, and I tried to picture what exactly happened there, especially since it was giving me such a weird feeling whenever I looked at it. Maybe it was the garage door and the way that it struck me as a little odd in comparison to the rest of the house: it was a yellow house with black trimming but the garage door appeared to be a slightly different shade of yellow, almost white.
Something off about it all.
“Did he or his parents tell you why they moved away from here?” I asked her, and she shook her head.
“I mean, I have a couple of theories—they hailed from New York and so, you know, maybe they just didn't like it out here. It's too much of a high desert where New York is more tempered.”
I had my doubts about that, however. I looked on at the house, at the awnings right outside of the two front windows that looked out to either side of the street given it stood on a corner, at the second floor, at the brick chimney which gave me an even weirder feeling than that of the garage door. Maybe it was just the color of the door looking off by comparison, but something about that left me wanting more out of that. Add to this, I struggled to picture him and his family living there.
I walked on over to the mouth of the driveway, which was slightly sloped from the garage door. Maybe it was an optical illusion. Maybe I really did have nothing to worry about and I was just going to drive myself far beyond the point of meshuggah. But something about it was going to drive me absolutely meshuggah regardless of what happened. I turned my attention to Christine, who strode on up to me with her hands tucked in her pockets and with a bewildered look on her face.
“Nobody lives here anymore, right?” I asked her once she came within earshot.
“As far as I know, no,” she replied. Cautiously, I strode up the driveway to the garage door. The panels were crisp and sharp, but the paint drooped a bit in a few places. I took a closer look to the one closest to my face.
Something buried underneath. I let my eyes wander down towards the base of the garage door itself to see it in full. Though it had been covered up, whoever did it did not do that well of a job, at least not for me, anyway.
The black outlines. The shape it made plus the angles.
The mere sight that haunted my own nightmares as well as that of my relatives.
“Just as I thought,” I muttered.
“What?” she asked me, and the chills ran up my spine. I took her by the hand and led her away from there.
“Alex, what is it?” she asked again, but I never replied. All I knew was I had to get away from there, and I had to get away from that particular part of the neighborhood as well. Our shoes padded on the pavement and that was the only noise I could hear. With a quick leap over the storm drains, we crossed the street from the house to the opposite corner; Christine stayed behind me as I led her away from there. At one point, I could feel her looking back, and I wished that I could completely tell her about what I was feeling. The thing is I had a hard enough time reading emotions on someone's face, let alone fessing up my own to someone like her.
We slowed down to a quick walked right before we reached the line of trees again. At least we were safe from the feeling that house gave unto me. Nevertheless, I still shivered and closed my coat to keep in the warmth. I was missing the warmth of those latkes her grandparents made for us.
I leaned back against the trunk of the tree closest to the sidewalk, and she gathered next to me as if we were hiding from something.
“God...” I breathed out, and I gazed up to the canopy of the trees over our heads. Though the leaves had gone for the autumn, the branches still protected us somewhat from the impending rain beyond us. I was not a man of prayer by any means but I could only pray that the rain spared us there in the trees for the time being.
“Makes me sick to think about,” I confessed to her with a shake of my head. “Regardless of whether or not he's your ex. It still makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.”
“What?” she demanded, and I licked my lips and ran my fingers through my hair.
“I really don't know if I can tell you,” I told her, “like I don't really know as to how to put it.”
“Well... start from the top,” she began. “That's what my parents' therapist says, just start from the beginning.”
“But... you said your ex was Jewish.”
“Yeah.”
“They lived here... not even a year, you said,” I continued.
“If I remember correctly, they moved here in July and they were gone once school was let out in June, so yeah, not even a year. I remember talking to him about it, too.”
I nibbled on my bottom lip yet again, that time because the mere suggestion only deepened the pit in my stomach.
“You know how you said you'd stand for me if something happened to me all because of my own heritage?” I recalled to her.
“Yeah,” she said, and she squinted her eyes at me as if she knew where I was going with this.
“It's so weird to me, because... you don't think of Nevada as sinking that low,” I admitted. “I mean—shit. 'Battle born.' Became a state in the face of the Civil War. You don't think of... something that hates me and your ex and probably wants the two of us dead, and maybe you, too, because you're associated with both him as well as me now. You don't think of—you know, that—as being here.”
Her mouth then dropped agape and her eyes widened. She brought a hand to her mouth, and all I could do was nod at her.
“Are you sure?” she asked me in a hushed voice.
“That fucking thing could be buried under six feet of black tar and I would still recognize it,” I told her in a single breath. “I knew what I saw, and I know for a fact that they're in that neighborhood.”
I peered out to the street. All the houses were shuttered and calm for the incoming rainstorm, but I still had my feelings no matter how they looked to me.
“Yeah, we should probably—” But before I could finish, she once again took me by the hand and yanked me away from there. Her hood fell right off her head as we ran as fast as could back to her grandparents' house with the wind and the rain at our backs; both picked up the pace as we reached the edge of the property and the welling up of the puddles in the front yard, and I was glad that we ran home when we did and as fast as we did, as well. The only exception was I never looked back to that house.
I didn't have to look back because I knew for a fact I was the menorah in the broken window.
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As the Seasons Grey